Today, let's take a nostalgic trip down memory lane with a little "What if...?" scenario. Remember the Sega 32X? It was this ambitious add-on for the Sega Genesis that aimed to catapult the beloved console into next-gen territory. While it didn't quite hit its mark, it left us wondering: what other classic consoles could have benefited from a similar leap forward?
Let's imagine—what if the N64 had gotten an "N128" upgrade? Could it have kept up with the PS1 and Saturn in that fierce console war era? Or maybe there’s another platform itching for a second wind, like the SNES or even the beloved Game Boy!
What other consoles do you think should've received their own "next-gen" add-ons?
Sure, it wasn't universally true, but consider if all the games that landed on Saturn, Sega CD and 32X instead landed just on the 32X. You would have had a lot more decent titles on the 32X to choose from, and the power of Sega promoting a single platform and vision would have probably brought even more studios and publishers onboard, because it would seem like a better investment.
Making games for a home console was crazy expensive back then, and unless companies were confident in the platform, they just wouldn't do it. Check out the difference in quality between Atari 2600 shovelware vs. early NES titles.
The problem with a platform with limited titles is it makes the stinkers really stick out. Look at the Jaguar -- very few "killer apps" to be remembered.
SegaCD was solving for a different problem that 32x didn't solve. Back then data storage was EXPENSIVE because it was in ROM ICs in cartridges. Each requiring expensive components and assembly. CDs solved the data storage problem making storage dirt cheap and very fast to reproduce.
The Genesis platform was a 5 year old console platform when 32x was released. The days of getting 8+ years out of a hardware platform were gone with the Famicom/NES. Technology had evolved quite a bit and the underlying Genesis platform was not up to competing with N64 which would arrive just 3 years later.
I don't disagree, but Genesis's issues were too many, even compared to Saturn. Genesis, even with SegaCD and 32x couldn't compete with Saturn, certainly not with N64 or PS1.